Great Article! I love the Bay Area, but it sounds like it's losing its soul! Western Civilization, with its emphasis on individualism, is not sustainable if we live in an economy where rage-baiting trolls rise to the top.
I feel like part of this might be because it's increasingly difficult to tell a positive story about tech's impact on society in the past 10-15 years. Steve Jobs-style optimism just doesn't ring true with general public anymore, and I would argue for good reason, so for marketing purposes rage bait is all that's left.
What accomplishments can the tech industry point to over the past decade? Well, it's things like:
- Social media and short-form video apps that are increasingly designed to be addictive, where many of their own users find using them unfulfilling, and are shredding our attentions spans and damaging democracy.
- Crypto in general, which seems to be mainly a tool for extremely speculative trading and illicit activities.
- Generative AI, which is taking jobs from creatives, producing mediocre slop, degrading the internet, worsening many people's mental health and social connectedness, and yet is endlessly overhyped with creepy, grandiose rhetoric that isn't being matched in reality. (Yes, there are real uses, but if you're not a programmer it's mainly a better version of Google, which isn't nothing to be clear).
- The whole phenomenon of enshittification, where apps become popular and then get steadily degraded and/or more expensive as companies need to make money (Uber, streaming TV, arguably google search itself).
- Gambling apps in general (including prediction markets, which frankly don't yet seem to have any socially beneficial use case, they're just another avenue for gambling).
- B2B SaaS and the cloud, which is nice and good, but isn't really directly impacting normal people's lives.
I'm sure there are lots of idealistic nerds in Silicon Valley still, but time and again we see that idealism turn into products that prey on people. You can see this shift happening already with AI, where Sam Altman is now going to push advertising in ChatGPT and soon explicitly enabling people to use it as a companion or sex bot. Ultimately, these companies need money from investors, and investors will demand returns by any means necessary.
I wouldn't call myself an "AI doomer" exactly, but if all these vice-signalling ads prompt a regulatory crackdown on AI, I will be glad. I appreciate these AI companies announcing their low moral character for all the world to see, even if it's just a matter of wrecking the social fabric for clicks.
I remember talking to a friend about SF…I have a lot of reason to move there, but I told my friend that I didn’t want to be _like_ the SF people I hung out with in town.
if Cuomo had managed to win, I’d be much more inclined to agree with the characterization of NYC as “static and decadent.”
but he didn’t.
Great Article! I love the Bay Area, but it sounds like it's losing its soul! Western Civilization, with its emphasis on individualism, is not sustainable if we live in an economy where rage-baiting trolls rise to the top.
I feel like part of this might be because it's increasingly difficult to tell a positive story about tech's impact on society in the past 10-15 years. Steve Jobs-style optimism just doesn't ring true with general public anymore, and I would argue for good reason, so for marketing purposes rage bait is all that's left.
What accomplishments can the tech industry point to over the past decade? Well, it's things like:
- Social media and short-form video apps that are increasingly designed to be addictive, where many of their own users find using them unfulfilling, and are shredding our attentions spans and damaging democracy.
- Crypto in general, which seems to be mainly a tool for extremely speculative trading and illicit activities.
- Generative AI, which is taking jobs from creatives, producing mediocre slop, degrading the internet, worsening many people's mental health and social connectedness, and yet is endlessly overhyped with creepy, grandiose rhetoric that isn't being matched in reality. (Yes, there are real uses, but if you're not a programmer it's mainly a better version of Google, which isn't nothing to be clear).
- The whole phenomenon of enshittification, where apps become popular and then get steadily degraded and/or more expensive as companies need to make money (Uber, streaming TV, arguably google search itself).
- Gambling apps in general (including prediction markets, which frankly don't yet seem to have any socially beneficial use case, they're just another avenue for gambling).
- B2B SaaS and the cloud, which is nice and good, but isn't really directly impacting normal people's lives.
I'm sure there are lots of idealistic nerds in Silicon Valley still, but time and again we see that idealism turn into products that prey on people. You can see this shift happening already with AI, where Sam Altman is now going to push advertising in ChatGPT and soon explicitly enabling people to use it as a companion or sex bot. Ultimately, these companies need money from investors, and investors will demand returns by any means necessary.
I wouldn't call myself an "AI doomer" exactly, but if all these vice-signalling ads prompt a regulatory crackdown on AI, I will be glad. I appreciate these AI companies announcing their low moral character for all the world to see, even if it's just a matter of wrecking the social fabric for clicks.
I remember talking to a friend about SF…I have a lot of reason to move there, but I told my friend that I didn’t want to be _like_ the SF people I hung out with in town.